GOP GRINCHES STEAL SAFETY NET

For one happy week in January, Casey O’Connell and her husband, Gerry Ferguson, both had jobs.

Ferguson, an Iraq war vet, had been out of work 15 months when he landed employment with Pennsylvania’s workforce development system. For two years, O’Connell had been working in customer service for a heating oil company.

“Great, now we can finally save up and buy a house,” O’Connell, 28, remembered thinking at the moment they became a two-earner family. She said grown up in apartments and relished the opportunity to give her children a traditional home in this Philadelphia suburb.